About Sonatype

Articles

Sonatype Secures $25 Million in Financing Led by NEA

Published: July 10, 2012 15:04

Sonatype, a component lifecycle management, announced it has secured $25 million in financing led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing investors Accel Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures and Bay Partners. The company will invest in product development and the global marketing of its revolutionary component lifecycle management technologies, intelligent tools and information services.

The software development landscape has shifted from custom-written, code-based applications to agile, component-based assemblies. The result is a more rapid, collaborative and cost-effective development process. However, the efficiency and performance gains brought by agile-development processes and the widespread use of externally sourced, open-source components have also introduced new risks and requirements for the modern software-development organization. Sonatype is at the forefront of this component-based software movement with intelligent tools and information services to accelerate the benefits of open source while eliminating security, quality and licensing risks.

"Sonatype embodies what we look for in our portfolio companies -- bold vision, innovative products and the power to change an industry," said Harry Weller, general partner at NEA and new Sonatype board member. "New demands for increased flexibility and improved time-to-value have reshaped the way software is developed and delivered with agile, open source, component-based development emerging as the new standard. Sonatype's deep history in the open-source software community, developer-friendly approach to component lifecycle management and skyrocketing demand for open-source components in the Central Repository, puts the company in a prime position to become the must-have tool used by every development organization in the world."

As the operators of the Central Repository -- the software industry's primary source for open-source components, housing more than 400,000 components and serving more than five billion requests per year -- Sonatype has developed a unique set of offerings to help organizations more effectively leverage component-based software development. The company has built a sophisticated infrastructure for mining virtually everything knowable about a given software component and delivering practical intelligence directly into the tools that developers use every day.

"Forward-thinking organizations that have embraced agile development also want to establish control and visibility across an increasingly complex software supply chain," said Wayne Jackson, CEO of Sonatype. "Legacy tools were designed for a different era, when software was written, not assembled. Our approach is different -- we provide real-time, actionable component information developers need, when they need it. We have created a truly unique infrastructure that bridges critical awareness gaps, enabling organizations to avoid risk, improve collaboration and build better software faster."

Additional Highlights

• After initial seed funding, the current Sonatype team has raised a total of $35 million in venture capital funding.

• Gartner reports that by 2015, open source will be included in mission-critical software portfolios within 99 percent of Global 2,000 enterprises and that half of these organizations will experience technology and cost challenges due to a lack of open-source governance.

• 80 percent or more of a typical application assembled today is comprised of open-source binary components.

• Sonatype was founded by Jason van Zyl, creator of Apache Maven and the Central Repository. Sonatype is a key contributor to significant open-source software projects: Apache Maven, Nexus, Hudson, m2eclipse and the Central Repository (sometimes referred to as "Maven Central").

• More than nine million developers and 80,000 organizations use Sonatype technologies.

• Sonatype operates the Central Repository, which contains more than 400,000 components and serves five billion requests a year from development organizations around the world.

• The average Global 2,000 organization consumes more than 1,000 unique components from the Central Repository every month with the volume from large banks and independent software vendors (ISVs) even greater.

• Development organizations overwhelmingly report the lack of established processes to ensure components used in development are current and free from known vulnerabilities. Only 32 percent of organizations maintain an inventory of open-source components used in production applications.

• Sonatype has captured more than 60 percent of the market for component repository management with its Nexus and Nexus Professional products.

About Sonatype

Sonatype is leading the component revolution. The company's innovative component lifecycle management products enable organizations to realize the promise of agile, component-based software development while avoiding security, quality and licensing risks. Sonatype operates the Central Repository, the industry's primary source for open-source components, housing more than 400,000 components and serving more than five billion requests per year from more than 60,000 organizations. The company has been a pioneer in component-based software development since its founding by Jason van Zyl, the creator of the Apache Maven build management system and the Central Repository. Since that time, Sonatype has been a leader in core open-source software development ecosystem projects used by more than nine million developers including Nexus, m2eclipse, and Hudson. Sonatype is privately held with investments from New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, Bay Partners, Hummer Winblad Vent ure Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures. Visit: www.sonatype.com or follow Sonatype on Twitter @SonatypeCM